James Thompson - Helsinki Blood

I check the time. Five ten a.m. I do it the easy way, ring their door buzzers, wake them, and announce that I have business concerning Saukko’s money and it can’t wait. The greedy fucks both think I’m acquiescing, returning the money, and let us in. I make Jyri Ivalo use his cell phone to call mine-to create the illusion of a phone conversation-and keep the phones open for five minutes, and to fetch his service pistol, which I take. We force them to get dressed and into the vehicle at gunpoint. Back to the crime scene we go.

Loviise is frightened, doesn’t want to go back, but Sweetness reassures her that everything is for her own good, that we’re trying to stop the people who were bad to her, and we show her our National Bureau of Investigation ID cards, which she can’t read, but she seems reassured. Probably more by our demeanors than IDs.

We escort them all up to the apartment. Sweetness and I slip on paper shoe covers and surgical gloves, but don’t allow them to do the same. I ask Loviise if she would mind to wait in another room while we men talk. She’s nervous to be back in the apartment but complies. The minister and chief view Sasha Mikoyan’s corpse with surprise and bemusement. Jyri Ivalo speaks first. “What the hell are you doing, Vaara? This makes no sense.”

First things first. I make them stand on each side of the corpse. “Sano muikku” -Say whitefish. They don’t smile. I have Sweetness snap pics of them and the corpse together with his cell phone camera.

I keep my.45 leveled at Jyri with one hand, my cane in the other. As with everyone else tonight, I confiscate their electronics to keep from being recorded. I’m aware, though, that some of them will have GPS tracking devices in the event of their auspicious owners’ disappearances. Then I think, So fucking what, they all know I took them and where I live.

“On the contrary,” I say, “it makes perfect sense. I’ve suffered damage to my property and threats against the lives of my family because of your imaginary ten million euros. I warned you if you didn’t let the matter drop, I would frame you for a crime, then kill you when you turned violent resisting arrest. The matter hasn’t been dropped. The butcher knife in that man’s back-incidentally, he’s a Russian diplomat, or more than likely a spy on a diplomatic passport named Sasha Mikoyan-is your sword of Damocles.”

I’ve confused him. “How so?”

I toss a pile of photos on the coffee table. “Have a look, both of you.”

They both flip through them. Osmo Ahtiainen, the minister, says, “OK, you got me. I’m not photogenic when I fuck. So what?”

Jyri Ivalo gets the message but pretends otherwise. “So we’ve fucked some of the same women. Big deal.”

“And here we are in a house of prostitution, an administrator of said house is dead, you’re both drunk, and your fingerprints are on the murder weapon.”

“No we aren’t, and they aren’t.”

“But they soon will be, and you’ll be very drunk. Too drunk to recall what happened here.”

I pull plastic freezer bags from my fishing tackle crime-kit box. “These are semen samples that you were both stupid enough to deposit in the mouth of Ivan Filippov’s mistress.” I take out the syringes Jari left at my house. “Your semen samples will be found in Mikoyan’s various orifices.”

Both of them go pale and reflect shock. The ramifications of what I can do to them hits them like slaps to the face.

I take the samples to the kitchen and put them in the freezer so they don’t thaw and deteriorate. I return with beers and bottles of vodka. “Start drinking. Fast.”

“Conclude,” Osmo says.

“As I’m an officer close to him, even known to socialize with him, Jyri called me and begged me to extricate him from a jam. He was very drunk. You two-given your voracious sexual appetites and lack of choosiness when it comes to your sexual partners, tag-teaming a man won’t really surprise anyone-but you had some kind of quarrel. You don’t even remember what about, but Mikoyan ended up dead. I came here after Jyri’s call, saw the corpse and informed you both that I can’t protect you from this. Jyri, in a last-ditch attempt to preserve his freedom, drew down on me and I had no choice but to kill him. Osmo, I haven’t decided what to do with you yet. Shooting you as well would be the most expedient. You’re not drinking. Chug-a-lug. Mikoyan’s DNA, by the way, will be found in your mouths and on your genitals.”

They both take deep drinks from the vodka bottles. I think they’re glad to have it. “What do you want to put a stop to this?” Jyri asks.

“I already explained the consequences of fucking with me to you. Repeat to me what I told you.”

He slurps Stolichnaya, knows his life hangs in the balance of the next few seconds. “We’ve covered that ground.”

I put my Colt to his forehead. “Indulge me, for the sake of clarity.”

He doesn’t want to say it. I nudge his forehead with the barrel.

“You said you would kill me.”

I move the gun fast, shift the muzzle to the right, fire, and shave off the bottom of his left earlobe. Not much, maybe an eighth of an inch. But he doesn’t know that. He just feels hot blood drizzling down his neck and thinks his ear is gone. He reaches up, finds it still there and sheds tears of relief.

“By all rights,” I say, “I should go ahead and kill you, but I feel generous and forgiving.”

He bursts into self-righteous anger. “You wanted to be someone important, to be above the law to further your own agenda. I gave you that and you stole from me.”

“How could I steal something from you that didn’t belong to you?”

“I didn’t send people to harass and threaten you. It’s not true.”

“But you know who did, don’t you? Minders watched my house. Interrogating them proved that they were cutouts run by SUPO Captain Jan Pitkanen, which, Osmo, brings us back to you. He’s your axman, isn’t he? Keep drinking. If your answer isn’t satisfactory, you two begin making your ways around the apartment, leaving touch prints, grab prints, footprints. It will appear that you’ve been here for hours.”

“Here’s the truth,” Osmo says. “You played a dangerous game and we took you into our confidence. You didn’t like the game, you cheated and didn’t want to play anymore. But you can’t walk away from it. You turned out to be a weak sister and disappointed us, stealing that ten million. You were already well-compensated. We took good care of you, and you betrayed us. The Powers That Be are most disappointed in you. Now everybody wants you and your buddies dead.”

He drinks, wipes his mouth on his sleeve. “The truth be told, we never needed you. We didn’t care if that left-wing bitch got her head cut off. We needed Milo Nieminen. He’s a bloodhound and we knew he’d find the money. It was always about the money. He’s shit crazy and needs a handler. That was your purpose. We always thought the kidnapping a sham that would lead back to that racist pig Saukko, via the Soderlund murder, then on to his son, Antti, and the money trail.

“And yes, I put Pitkanen on a detail to watch you with an eye toward recovering the money. He’s my liaison to Veikko Saukko, and via Saukko, to the Real Finn hierarchy and every hate group in the country. He has no strict instructions from me. I empowered him to use his own judgment in coordinating the campaign against you. Did Jyri know this? Yes. Did he fuck with you personally? No. And if you frame or kill Jyri and me, it won’t help you one jot. You’ve made too many enemies.”

“Pitkanen is your liaison to Saukko regarding what?”

“We were supposed to return his son and money. Instead, he got his son’s unrecognizable corpse and no money. Yet he contributed generously to the parliamentary campaign anyway and booted up the million euros he promised. Pitkanen liaises by catering to Saukko’s every whim. I don’t ask the particulars.”